Re: It's not that big of a deal...

You can try, but people who reject all evidence or utilize irrelevant technicalities to make themselves fell right will never change their mind. When you combine that with a strong desire to evangelize everywhere people will naturally get tired of constantly bring forth the same evidence proving them wrong over and over again. Ignoring them doesn't really work because then they could possibly convince someone new that they are correct. Over time the will eventually piss someone off enough to respond to them with an attack of some kind and with the number of readers hear there will always be someone new being pushed over the edge.

Re: Argh!

My concern tends to lean toward having to spend over $60k building such a lab. Considering how much enterprise class security devices cost I would need one hell of a pay raise if I'm expected to be building my own lab.

Re: huh?

Most ISPs offer services that can filter a lot of the DDoS noise before it gets to your pipe. I don't think "all of the 'noise'" is appropriate, but it works fairly well. Modern DDoS attacks will cap your firewalls CPU pretty fast even if they aren't really using up the total bandwidth. Huge numbers of small packets from a lot of unique sources uses up resources fairly quickly.

Re: Service Entrance

I don't know how BMW perform those detailed diagnostics on my car, it's not written in the manual, should I also consider this as the backdoor approach. As long as it presents no danger to me then I accept the fact that a "service port" exists even though it is undocumented.

It is written in the maintenance manuals. I've also never relied on the BMW computer systems to protect my sensitive data. If they need to maintain the device there is no reason to hide the account they use to do it.

Re: "THESE data ARE"

I really hate that. Saying that data is always a plural is so illogical to me I can't even conceive of a way to accept it. "Data are" sounds so terrible it makes my mental ears bleed every time I read it.

Re: Of course...

Re: The blindness of cat lovers...

I would like to see more predators in the urban setting. Maybe eagles, owls and the like. Mostly anything that will kill the damn squirrels. Where I live I think they are the most dangerous population to the birds, there are maybe 2 cats around but so many squirrels in the trees that they spend a fair amount of time tearing holes in people's houses to make a place to live.

@Fibbles

@jason 7

You are absolutely correct. We all no no one is using any of those sites designed to help you learn more about your family history. No one cares about anything their grandparents ever did much less what their ancestors further back did. I'm pretty sure ancestory.com is going to fold soon.

Re: Perhaps, Matt, you should do what I do...

Interesting. How does the presentation work? Are they in a DVD disk array of some sort so when your family members in a different state click a link they can see them all or did you just completely miss the point of the article?

Not so doubtful

The TSA has been trying to push the body scanners to the railroads, buses and stadiums. This will only encourage them to do so. The have had VIPER teams go out and randomly pull people off the highway to search.

'There is no contract'

Malware

Payload is irrelevant. Malware is a term to that includes all malicious software, weather it be trojan, virus, worm, or spyware. Everything that is a trojan is malware, but not everything that is malware is a trojan.

Paladins

I always viewed paladins as the hard core Crusader type where every decision made has to be labeled as good or evil and if evil is chosen those who chose must be purged, there is no mercy. Thou has urinated upon a tree in the woods sacred to the Holy Mother, thou must perish!

@How cats purr

"It turns out that cats have special wiring! The wiring travels from the brain to the muscles in the voice box, and this wiring is able to vibrate the muscles so that they act as a valve for air flowing past the voice box. The muscles work both during inhalation and exhalation, which creates the impression that cats can purr continuously. The air passes through the valve, which opens and closes rapidly to create the purring sound."

@John Lilburne

Yes and none of the sites that were took down by ICE earlier this year were legit. Well except for the ones that were taken down that were legitimate. SOPA allows the RIAA and the MPAA to take down sites at will without allowing the sites an opportunity to defend themselves. But I guess the RIAA has never falsely accused anyone of stealing before so we don't have to worry about it happening again.

Local US stations

There are lots of people in the US who watch local stations, but our local stations tend to have some several nationally syndicated shows on them as well. I think the large amount of news contains mostly repeated information over and over, I know the national 24 hour news channels do.

Over here people didn't move from local over the air stations to cable very quickly, and when they did cable was pretty much forced to include the local stations to get people to join up.

U.F.Os

I believe in UFOs, but not really the alien kind. There are all kinds of flying objects I can't identify. I'm not really much into birds or commercial jets so I couldn't identify very many of them at all.

@ArmanX

Think of it this way. If you have morals and break them you are both immoral and a hypocrite, whereas if you have no morals you are just immoral. It doesn't make cheating on your spouse ok it just makes it worse.

When someone spends at least some of their time publicly sitting in judgement of others for the life they chose then that someone had better be able to follow their own rules if they don't want to be ridiculed.

Streak 7

Those questions are one of the worst things that has happened to Security. Most of the questions frequently the sorts of things you'd talk about with friends and acquaintance. So if you want to keep them secure they are actually limiting you're social life. You should have to be afraid of talking to people you don't know well about your first pet or your first car.

Maybe if they were questions like " What is your favorite sexual position?" at least they would be something most of us don't normally talk about with strangers, but even that would open you up to attacks from unhappy exs.

@Ian Michael Gumby

So one IP address sending spam is means the ISP isn't policing it's network? Aside from the fact that there are almost no ISPs who do police their network, locking out an entire ISP because of one address is ridiculous beyond measure. Especially since they did block that IP.

@TheOtherHobbbes

That is too true. Many restaurants here in the US offer surveys about the quality of their service. If you give them a 4 out of 5 the server gets dinged for not getting a perfect score. Over here that kind of rating is something to be punished for. I'm not even sure what a server would have to do for me to honestly consider them a 5 out of 5, I'm not a terribly demanding customer average service is ok by me.

@Chris W

I disagree

+ does not have to be defined the way most people use it. It is quite possible to create a working mathematical space in which the + sign has a very different definition. The only reason 2 + 2 = 4 is because of a consensus on the definition of + in the Real space (where most math is done).

If yo want I can dig out my abstract algebra book and work out what is necessary to define an algebraic space.

Handouts

Girls bullied on nerd forum

It's not that uncommon for nerds to try to push women out of their groups. Some of them are very resentful against the opposite sex. Some believe that women shouldn't be allowed to participate in whatever particular nerdy activity they are involved in. Others just drool too much which isn't the same as bullying but I imagine is a bit of a turn off.

I think some of it is because some nerds blame women for not having any interest in them. After all it couldn't be related to their social skills because they get along with each other just fine.

Full Disclosure, I participate in several different activities that would likely put me in this category.